What happens when a button is pressed in PHP forms?

When a button is pressed in PHP forms, it typically triggers a form submission. This means that the data entered into the form fields is sent to the server for processing. To handle the form submission in PHP, you can check if the button was pressed by using the isset() function on the button's name attribute. If the button was pressed, you can then process the form data accordingly.

```php
if(isset($_POST['submit_button'])) {
    // Process form data here
}
```

In this code snippet, 'submit_button' should be replaced with the name attribute of the button in your form. This code block will only be executed if the button with the name 'submit_button' was pressed.